Graphic Design Tips & Tricks for Beginners

  • Natalia
  • 5th April 2018

Graphic designer or animation graphic designer is not an easy job. It will take few years and several designs before your work will be recognised. For young designers trying to learn how to create good design, I have a few tips that in the long term will help them to go freelance or find a good job.

What to do First

One of the first and most important decisions you will have to make is to choose your niche. If you fancy static graphic for large screen display or printing you should master applications like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign and Corel Draw Graphic. These are the requirements for the most popular media and graphic design companies. Additionally to the above, depending on your job specification you may need to learn how to use other photo editing applications. You can try these using some free software like DrawPlus starter edition or Inkscape. Reference the style and the approach, please be creative and develop your own!

To try on motion graphics and animation you need to have a basic knowledge of static graphics. I would like to say that the motion graphic is nothing else but making your graphic moving in sequence. Hmm, for those who think that way I’ve got bad news. With motion graphics, you must include the timeline, optimising images and editing the sound sequence. If this is not enough, you need to divide your motion graphic between 3D and 2D animations.

Best Place to Start

The best place to start your motion graphic adventure is Blender from blender.org. I suggested this application for two reasons. First, one is because it’s free. Second is because it’s hugely supported and stuffed with some amazing tutorials that will help you get off the ground. Another pretty cool software to try is Fusion8, however, with this app the learning process is steep. If you are looking to aim higher, my recommendations are simple After Effects, Maya, and Nuke. Apps like Nuke and Maya have been used in big Hollywood productions so with the prestige comes money.